How CGI visuals can benefit your business

By Phil Souter, Graphic/3D Designer at Bluestorm

Bluestorm Editor

29th January 2015

What is CGI?

Computer-generated images that illustrate their subject in full, as if you were viewing it in ‘real life’ rather than on a screen. This advance in technology allows consumers to view products in their entirety, prior to purchase. It also allows the accurate visualisation of items that may not yet have been manufactured and gives a strong idea of how these items will look once they have been produced.

To sum up – it’s a great tool to evaluate and sell designs before they're actually built.

What is it used for?

Product design visuals, packaging, exhibition design or architectural visuals. CGI can even be used for one-off illustrations for a website or brochure where the product has not yet been physically produced, or where no images currently exist and costs becomes prohibitive.

What CGI visuals can do for you:

1. It can help not only your business, but also your prospective investor or customer to visualise your proposal within its early stages, enabling you to identify and solve design problems from the outset.

2. A designer can explore the design concept with you, by adding or removing features, variations, colours and textures. Once you generate “photo realistic images”, you can use them for your market research.

3. CGI will also allow you to virtually simulate how your product will look on the shelves against competitors.

4. Once you have your feedback and research is complete, you should be thinking about a physical prototype and manufacturing.

5. However, you don’t have to stop there. You can use your visuals for marketing and promotion purposes. Recycle your virtual model again and again, using it to support printed material in marketing campaigns, as well as using it within fully animated TV adverts, online videos and presentations.

Products and scenes can easily be created and manipulated within the 3D visualisation arena to create true to life images that are more cost effective than producing the real thing.

Thinking of a CGI visual for your business?

At Bluestorm, we can create high-impact visuals and animations from supplied CAD plans or photography.